Teach English in Wenquan Zhen - Tianshui Shi

Pronunciation is a complicated area as teachers sometimes lack confidence to teach it methodically. Most pronunciation tends to concentrate on individual sounds. An effective teacher considers teaching pronunciation as an integral part of the course. Skills pronunciation reflects feelings and personal reactions to different situations. Phonology is the study, science, analysis and classification of the physical properties of sound. Individual sounds, sounds in connected speech, stress within words, and stress within whole utterances are difficult to perceive in isolation because the main interest of someone being engaged in communication is to understand the meaning of what is being said. However, some sort of instinctive perception and analytical perception is required to communicate with people. In classroom, there should be some time given to pronunciation, stress and intonation practice to make the students aware of the importance of accuracy and clarity of communication. Intonation is generally considered to be the variation in volume and pitch in a whole sentence. Intonation carries the message in a sentence. It is particularly important in questioning, agreeing, disagreeing or confirming statements. It is fundamental in expressing various emotions. The normal pattern of intonation in a statement is the rise/fall intonation. Example: I haven?t seen him in a week. The pitch rises at the word ?him? and falls at the end of the sentence. The falling intonation also suggests that we have finished what we want to say. The second common intonation pattern is the fall/rise pattern. This indicates surprise or disagreement. This pattern also indicates that the speaker wants the other person to respond. This pattern also indicates that speaker has not yet finished what he has to say. Sometimes, intonation is basically flat which indicates that the speaker doesn?t really have much to say or perhaps doesn?t want to communicate. Intonation patterns can be used predict the nature of forthcoming information like in the news where the newsreader reads the win/loss of a team. There are a number of ways to teach students intonation: 1. Nonsense words: Students can be made to practice some nonsense words telling them with what attitude they want to communicate on each occasion. 2. By gesture: Hands can be used to indicate whether the sentence starts on a high or a low pitch and then indicate the direction of the pitch. 3. Humming or singing: By humming or singing the sentences to hear the stress and intonation. 4. The board: By using marks using straight or angled arrows emphasize the point being made and the direction of the intonation. Stress on particular words must be taught to students. Stress on different words means different things. For example, consider the following sentence: He didn?t mean to study biology. Stressing on ?He? means somebody else and not he meant to study biology. Stressing on ?didn?t? means he is contradicting somebody who thinks he meant to study biology. Stressing on ?biology? means he meant to study some other subject. Multi-syllable words in English have one or more parts that are stressed. There are two simple rules about word stress: 1. We can only stress syllables and not individual vowels or consonants. 2. On word has only one stress. In a few words there can be a secondary stress but it is much smaller than the main stress and is used only in longer words. A few complicated rules that help to understand where to put stress better is given as follows: 1. Stress on first syllable: Most 2-syllable nouns: Chína, táble, ánswer Most 2-syllable adjectives: Pléasant, Háppy, húngry 2. Stress on last syllable: Most two syllable verbs: atténd, complaín 3. Stress on penultimate syllable: Words ending in -ic: pathetic, jurássic Words ending in -sion, -tion: revelátion, competítion 4. Stress on anti-penultimate(Third from the end) syllable: Words ending in cy, ty, phy, gy: demócracy; dependabílity, geólogy Words ending in -ive: rélative, compáritive Words ending in -al: crítical, geológical 5. Compound words: For compound nouns stress is on the first part: Póstman, greénhouse For compound adjectives, the stress is on the second part: bad-témpered, old-fáshioned For compound verbs, the stress is on second part: understánd, overflow Lack of stress: Auxiliary verbs such as do, don?t, have are rarely stressed upon except for special emphasis. Ex: He doesn?t work in the school. Stressing on ?doesn?t? means somebody said he worked in the school and the other was emphasising he doesn?t work in the school. Similarly, pronouns and prepositions are normally unstressed. Few techniques to teach stress are by using contrastive stress, by gestures, choral work, underlining the stressed part of the words on board or by using stress marks. Native English speakers usually link the words in the speech while the talk. For example, ?Watcha wanna do?? means ?What do you want to do??. The dictionary not only gives the meaning of the words and states the class but also provides the pronunciation in the form of phonetic symbols. The phonetics symbols are given as follows: The IPA (International phonetics alphabet) symbols for short vowels is given below with examples I Thin, sit, rich, kick, hit. e Went, intend, send, letter. æ Cat, hand, nap, flat, have. ? Fun, love, money, one, London, come. ? Put, look, should, cook, book, look. ? Rob, top, watch, squat, sausage. ? Alive, again, mother. The IPA (International phonetics alphabet) symbols for long vowels is given below with examples i: Need, beat, team. ?: Third, turn, worse, world, word. a: Glass, half, car, arch, hard. ?: Talk, law, bored, yawn, jaw. u: Few, boot, lose, gloomy, fruit, chew. The IPA (International phonetics alphabet) symbols for diphthongs is given below with examples ?? Near, ear, clear, weird, disappear. e? There, air, care, bear, stairs. ?? Cure, pure, tourist. e? Face, space, grace, case, eight. ?? Joy, employ, toy, coil, oyster. a? My, time, life, high, fly, wide. ?? No, don?t, stones, alone, hole. a? Mouth, house, brown, couch. The tongue, the larynx and the glottis, the alveolar ridge, the hard palate and the soft palate are important parts of the mouth which helps in speech. Velar: The soft palate is also called velum. Velar consonants are produced when the back of the tongue is raised and strikes the velum. Palatal: The central part of the tongue comes in close contact with the central part of the roof the mouth as in /j/ sound in yellow. Palatal-alveolar: The tip of the tongue should be between the alveolar ridge and the palate like the /?/ like is pleasure and treasure. Alveolar: In alveolar sounds, the front or tip of the tongue is raised toward the alveolar ridge. Example : /t/ in time and train Dental: In this type of sounds, the tongue is placed in between the teeth as in ?think?. Labio-dental: This sounds are made when the top teeth comes in contact with the lover lips like the /f/ and /v/ . Bilabial: The two lips meet together when this sound is made in /b/, /m/, /p/ . Glottal: This sound is made when the air is restricted at the glottis. /h/ is only one sound in English which is glottal like in hit. Manner of articulation: Sounds like /p/ and /b/ are formed the same way, but there is a difference of how they are pronounced. This difference is referred to as manner of articulation. Plosives: When these types of sounds are made, the air is completely blocked before being released in an explosive manner. The IPA (International phonetics alphabet) symbols for consonants(plosives) is given below with examples p Pin, cap, purpose, pause. b Bag, bubble, build, robe. t Time, train, tow, late. d Door, day, drive, down, feed. k Cash, quick, cricket, sock. g Girl, green, grass, flag. Fricatives: In these sounds, an obstruction is made, but are still forced through. As air is being pushed through a very small space, turbulence or friction is produced. The IPA (International phonetics alphabet) symbols for consonants(fricatives) is given below with examples. f Full, Friday, fish, knife. v Vest, village, view, cave. ? Think, thought, Thursday, earth. ð Those, brothers, either, others. s Sight, six, silence, sun, kiss. z Zoo, crazy, lazy, zigzag, nose. ? Shirt, rush, shop, cash. ? Pleasure, treasure, measure. h High, help, hold, hello. Nasal: Nasal sounds are produced by making an obstacle in the mouth and lowering the soft palate so that air can only escape through the nasal cavity. The IPA (International phonetics alphabet) symbols for consonants(nasals) is given below with examples m Room, mother, mad, more. n Now, nobody, knew, turn. ? King, thing, song, swimming. Lateral: Lateral sounds are produced with the air escaping on the sides of the tongue rather than on the front. /l/ is a lateral sound. Affricates: An affricate pair is a plosive with constrictive release. The IPA (International phonetics alphabet) symbols for consonants(Affricates) is given below with examples ?? Choose, cheese, church, watch. d? Joy, juggle, juice, stage. Approximants: These sounds are produced by narrowing(but not blocking) the vocal tract.by placing the tongue near another part of the vocal tract. The IPA (International phonetics alphabet) symbols for consonants(approximants) is given below with examples r Road, roses, river, ring, ride. J Yellow, usual, tune, yesterday, yard. w Wall, walk, wine, world. l and ? Law, lots, leap, long, pill, cold, chill, melt. Various techniques are used to teach pronunciation of individual sounds. 1. Peer dictation: In this activity, students read words or sentences for a partner to write down. 2. Your own mouth: Over-emphasising individual parts of a word can be beneficial as students can observe how the word is being pronounced. 3. Visuals: By drawing a diagram of the mouth showing how a particular sound is made. 4. Phonemes: symbols for common or difficult sounds can be introduced to help the class note down problem areas more easily. 5. Tongue twisters: Tongue twisters help students learn pronunciation and can be fun too. Different teachers have different ideas as to when to teach pronunciation but most common are teaching pronunciation the whole lesson, lesson slots, as and when required.